HPE Discover 2021: HPE Project Aurora

HPE is that company that does their thing so well, one tends to take them for granted because all aspects of your engagement with them seem to be humming along splendidly.

HPE Project Aurora is HPE’s zero-trust security scheme that utilizes cloud nativity to deliver security from the edge to the cloud.

According to HPE’s Keith White, General Manager for HPE GreenLake, Project Aurora would be tasked to deliver an impactful results in helping secure computing environments by constantly verifying all assets in that same environment, from all hardware, all software, and all connected devices all the way to all workloads.

Project Aurora will initially be embedded within HPE GreenLake Lighthouse to automatically and continuously verify the integrity of the hardware, firmware, operating systems, platforms, and workloads (including workloads from security vendors as well), enabling HPE to swiftly detect advanced threats in seconds compared to a reported average of 24 days, minimizing the loss, and possibly, the unauthorized encryption (and corruption) of valuable data and intellectual property.

Futurum’s Steven Dickens sees a 3-pronged hardware approach taken by HPE Project Aurora:

  1. Increase data value through attestation and verification.

  2. Accelerate innovation by laying a zero trust foundation.

  3. Identify attacks and protect investments.

Project Aurora is being built both for HPE and its customers to measure, test and verify every piece of technology in their environments.

According to HPE, Project Aurora is a cloud-native, zero trust security from edge to cloud. That means, as we know, SASE is one aspect of the edge implementation with security. The other one is zero trust. Zero trust means you trust nothing, but ultimately it is how we attest that everything in your environment is secure from the user to the application to the operating system to the firmware to the hardware.

You are very familiar with our Silicon Root of Trust. We have taken that to the next level with our cloud-native zero trust integration of SPIFFE [the Secure Production Identity Framework for Everyone] and SPIRE [the SPIFFE Runtime Environment] in a cloud-native deployment of open source. But then what we do is connect to these endpoints and in between to attest that everything is secure with a zero trust approach, which I think is revolutionary because it fortifies all your investments. Without changing anything, we actually make it more secure in a modern, open way.

We are making that introduction tomorrow as a preview. By the end of the year it will be fully integrated with both Lighthouse and with HPE GreenLake. So it comes with a platform and it comes with the solution you are deploying—one less thing to worry about.


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Tech Field Day 23 flashback: Shattering the limits of connectedness with Vcinity

Vcinity’s corporate motto is “Shatter the Limits of Connectedness”.

Remember it, for we will revisit.

At Gestalt IT’s Tech Field Day #23, I had the privilege, as a delegate to the event, of listening to a briefing by some VITOs from Vcinity.

* VITO: Very Important Top Officer.

What does Vcinity do.

Vcinity delivers users the ability to work on data-in-place over distance.

This came about from the challenges of having to collocate data with applications and users.

Mind you, the moving, caching, and copying of this data, has increased the cost of insights, reduced productivity, delay in decision making, and exposed organizations and people to unintended liabilities.

What Vcinity does is facilitate the consumption of data from wherever it is needed without network infrastructure constraints, and remove restrictions of latency caused by physical/network distance.

How does Vcinity do it?

The Vcinity Data Access Platform, or VDAP, enables applications to process data anywhere over any WAN (Microwave, IP, Satellite, 5G), such as video rendering, explain our approach to eliminating the effects of latency.

This is how Vcinity sees the ‘connected enterprise’.

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Vcinity also operated via these “ground rules”:

  • No manipulation of data

  • No changes in application

  • No compression, no de-duplication

  • No software or agents to install

  • No WAN accelerators

  • No multi-site caching appliances

  • No changes on physical LAN

  • No copies of data

In order to do this, Vcinity possesses 32 patents covering the delivery of advanced capabilities critical to applications consuming data over WANs. (From their presentation.)

Moreover, this technology is well baked, having being in production for over ten years in the service of the US federal government, and evolving from a requirement to help high speed file movement to what it does now.

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What it does

Vcinity users are able to access their data remotely without needing to make a copy of that data at the remote location, effectively removing the need for data and compute colocation.Users are also able to use cloud-based compute against local data, or vice versa.

And Vcinity works even over satellite links; for instance, sustaining 90%+ throughput over a 500 Mbps link that had a 500 ms latency!

Literally “shattering the limits of connectedness’!

Vcinity’s mission.

  • ·        Access data in real-time

  • ·        Accelerate cloud adoption

  • ·        Reduce cost and complexity

  • ·        Increase infrastructure ROI

  • ·        Deliver value – faster

  • ·        Keep data secure

As I see it

Vcinity enables new agility for firms using the product.

Users no longer have to be worried about the time to deployment of data access: it is always available. Heck, even compute is always available as the user can leverage cloud compute.

Security of data is now a breeze, and several scenarios come to mind for this product.

By allowing users to decouple data from compute, Vcinity allows enterprises to keep their data safe. This is a boon

The military must love it, as data can reside in their secure locations while users in stressful locations can act against that data.

Film producers no longer have to worry about copies of their products in the wild or in the hands of counterfeiters, as the data doesn’t move anywhere.

For companies deploying VDI solutions, Vcinity should provide both speed and security.

Even if data mobility is a must, Vcinity currently has the only known solution that would allow for the movement of 1 petabyte of data in less than 24 hours.

Connection utilization is also vastly improved, as pipes are actually filled at high capacity.

© 2002 – 2021, John Obeto II for Blackground Media Unlimited

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HPE Alletra & Data Services Cloud Console

Storage “needs intelligence”, we are told, as HPE unveils Alletra, their offering which promises to help speed up enterprise transformations by unleashing data, rather than just managing storage.

As it stands right now, the complexity of current enterprise infrastructure tends to greatly hamper transformation while by creating bottlenecks to agility and innovation.

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And with research data showing that 93% of IT decision makers view complexity as impeding digital transformation, 95% of them viewing better data utilization as a Top-10 priority, and 94% of them wanting the smoothness of their cloud experiences on-premises.

HPE’s aim is the following: simplify the data infrastructure, integrate data management, globally protect data, and eliminate disruptions.  

AI. AI. AI!

To do this, HPE is introducing AI into the mix.

The vision here is to use AI-driven global intelligence to deliver a new set of cloud data services, crowd infrastructure services, and cloud-native data framework.

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HPE Alletra and HPE Data Services Cloud Console

HPE Alletra & DSCC (74)

HPE is delivering a hardware+software solution to deliver on their vision.

The hardware component is HPE Alletra.

HPE Alletra

Alletra is HPE’s hardware component.

It consists of two models, the Alletra 6000 developed for business-critical workloads. It comes with a ‘6-nines’ availability as standard, delivering up to 1 million IOPS, and flexible scaling.

HPE Alletra & DSCC (47)

Mission-critical workloads are the forte of the high end Alletra 9000, utilizing NVM Express, delivers all-active, multi-node parallelization, comes with a 100% availability standard, and is also certified already for 96 SAP Hana nodes in a 4U configuration.

HPE Alletra & DSCC (45)

HPE Data Services Cloud Console

The power of Alletra is unleashed by the HPE Data services Cloud Console.

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The Data Services Cloud Console – which I will call DSCC going forward – allows for the deployment, management, upgrading, and optimization of Alletra hardware.

HPE Alletra & DSCC (43)

Using the DSCC, users can access data, protect it, search that data, and use it from anywhere.

HPE Alletra & DSCC (98)

 This video here tells more about these products.


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TFD23: Vcinity

My favorite - by far! - presenters at Tech Field Day 23 were from Vcinity.

Their product is very innovative, and completely ready for Prime Time!

I will crib the descriptions from Gestalt IT’s Vcinity TD+FD23 page here, as I reached out to Vcinity for an in-depth briefing*.

Harry Carr, Vcinity CEO, re-frames the problem statement around compute over WAN. Meet the best kept secret in the industry, Vcinity. Harry will set the stage for the presentation; he will highlight common challenges in today’s data driven world. The inability to access data at the speed of relevance. Data is created everywhere and getting data to the application is throttled by network latency and inability to use compute resources best suitable for the job. This time lag prevents the use of cloud compute resources, real-time AI/ML analytics, and data informed operations. Harry will also introduce Vcinity’s approach to solving these challenges and creating a truly connected enterprise.

And that is just the first of the videos you will enjoy on Vcinity.

https://techfieldday.com/appearance/vcinity-presents-at-tech-field-day-23/

*Vcinity is ready to talk, but I am quite constrained timewise right now, as we exit our nationwide coronavirus COVID-19 lockdowns. Please bear with me.


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TFD23: Hazelcast

Hazelcast presented at Tech Field Day 23.

Hazelcast provides in-memory compute solutions.

CEO Kelly Herrell provided an overview of Hazelcast, beginning with some background information on the company mission and the sectors where Hazelcast is active, including Kubernetes, micro services, hybrid cloud, edge computing, and machine learning.

Next, Terry Walters presented a vehicle telemetry demo showing real-time in-memory technologies from Hazelcast.

Dale Kim then dove into use cases by  Hazelcast customers.

Field CTO, Neil Stevenson, will showcase how Hazelcast Jet, a real-time streaming engine, can be used by banks and investors to monitor trades. The financial industry must monitor trades in real time, but traditional solutions delay analysis for batch processing. Hazelcast Jet can process streams of data in real time for near-real-time visibility with a simplified processing pipeline.

Please follow the presentations here. https://techfieldday.com/appearance/hazelcast-presents-at-tech-field-day-23/


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I will be at Tech Field Day 23

Tech Field Day 23 is upon us.

And I will be there.

It is virtual, and all are welcome.

It is going to be quite the do, with companies such as Riverbed, Vcinity, Micron, Hazelcast, Xilinx, BlueCat, and Pure Storage presenting.

Delegates are ready, and the convos are sure to otherworldly, as usual.

Here’s the full schedule:

•        Wednesday, April 21

o            8:00-10:00 - Riverbed Presentation

o            10:00-10:30 - Riverbed Breakout

o            11:00-12:30 - Vcinity Presentation

o            12:30-13:00 - Vcinity Breakout

o            13:30-15:30 - Micron Presentation

o            15:30-16:00 - Micron Breakout

•        Thursday, April 22

o            8:00-10:00 - Hazelcast Presentation

o            10:00-10:30 - Hazelcast Breakout

o            11:00-12:30 - Xilinx Presentation

o            12:30-13:00 - Xilinx Breakout

o            13:30-15:30 - Possible On-Premise IT Roundtable Recordings

•        Friday, April 23

o            8:00-10:00 - BlueCat Presentation

o            10:00-10:30 - BlueCat Breakout

o            11:00-13:00 - Pure Storage Presentation

o            13:00-13:30 - Pure Storage Breakout

Already, the swag is flowing.

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Join us.

© 2002 – 2021, John Obeto II for Blackground Media Unlimited

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Celebrating Black History Month 2021 Day #6: Astronauts

The Spaceriders

Blacks have always been there.

Whenever anything happens on Earth, we are there.

Even in space, we are there.

Today is dedicated to Black astronauts and astronaut-candidates, from Ed Dwight who was unceremoniously cashiered out of the astronaut corps, to those who lost their lives for it: Robert Henry Lawrence, Jr, Ronald McNair, and Michael Anderson, and all of those in waiting.

We, especially I, hold you all in highest esteem!

Ed Dwight; Michael P. Anderson; Michael E. Belt; Charles Bolden; Guion Bluford; Yvonne Cagle; Robert Curbeam; Alvin Drew; Jeanette J. Epps; Victor J. Glover; Frederick D. Gregory; Bernard A. Harris Jr.; Joan Higginbotham; Livingston L. Holder, Jr.; Mae Jemison; Robert Henry Lawrence Jr.; Ronald McNair; Leland D. Melvin; Arnaldo Tamayo Méndez; Robert Satcher; Winston E. Scott; Jessica Watkins; Stephanie Wilson.

The Wikipedia page below will take you to an index of each of our astronauts.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_African-American_astronauts

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Blaxploitation movie of the day is that masterpiece in Afrofuturism “Space Is The Place” (1974) starring Sun Ra & His Intergalactic Solar Arkestra.

The eponymous soundtrack to the movie is a sublime ode to the genius of Sun Ra.

Celebrating Black History Month 2021 #5: Michael Lee-Chin

Michael Lee-Chin

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The first non-American Black billionaire.

Michael Lee-Chin has been inspirational just because he showed that billionaire Blacks were going to be, as we are, population-wise, global.

Lee-Chin made his fortune in investments, a field I am particularly fond of.

Plus, he’s from Jamaica. The Island, Mon!

- - - - oOo - - - -

Blaxploitation Movie of the Day: “Car Wash” (1976); starring Richard Pryor; Franklyn Ajaye; Ivan Dixon; Bill Duke ; Antonio Fargas; DeWayne Jessie (a.k.a. Otis Day); Garrett Morris; and the Pointer Sisters

© 2002 – 2021, John Obeto II for Blackground Media Unlimited

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Celebrating Black History Month 2021 #4: Colin Kaepernick, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Muhammad Ali, John Carlos, Tommie Smith, Jesse Owens, and Jackie Robinson

Athletes, and activists

The Captain, the Greatest, and all other Pioneers of racial activism.

They were ostracized by many, yet attained even greater heights despite the burdens of racial adversity.

Ali was jailed, John Carlos and Tommie Smith were banned for life, Jesse Owens was shunned  - thank God! – by Hitler, and Jackie Robinson endured ungodly scorn to set records.

They set the stage for our great athletic activist heroes of today: Sir Lewis Hamilton, LeBron James, Naomi Osaka, all members of the Atlanta Dream, Sir Marcus Rashford, Brendon Ayanbadejo, Carmello Anthony, Giannis Antetokounmpo, and almost all Black athletes.

We are in their debt.

Blaxploitation movie of the day: “A Piece of the Action” (1977) , starring Sir Sidney Poitier, James Earl Jones, Denise Nicholas.

© 2002 – 2021, John Obeto II for Blackground Media Unlimited

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Celebrating Black History Month 2021 #3: Reginald F. Lewis

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Reginald F. Lewis

The late Reginald Lewis was a personal hero of mine, and a business favorite.

He was the first Black person to be featured on the Forbes 400, and for me, that milestone was definitely welcome.

Reginald Lewis swarm with the Wall Street sharks, and parlayed his business acumen into incredible financial success, paving the way for people like me to dream bigger, and more expansively.

Sadly, Lewis was felled by brain cancer in 1993 at the young age of 50.

Blaxploitation Movie of the Day: “Let’s Do It Again” (1975), starring Sidney Poitier, Calvin Lockhart, John Amos, as Kansas City Mack, Jimmie Walker, Ossie Davis, Denise Nicholas, and Mel Stewart.

His book is “Why Should White Guys Have All the Fun?": How Reginald Lewis Created a Billion-Dollar Business Empire

© 2002 – 2021, John Obeto II for Blackground Media Unlimited

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Celebrating Black History Month 2021 #2: Katherine Johnson, Mary Jackson & Dorothy Vaughan

Katherine Goble Johnson, Dorothy Vaughn & Mary Jackson

What these amazingly inspiring ladies had to go through, is a lesson for Blacks today: embrace STEM.

Sadly, they toiled in obscurity until the movie came out.

No longer.

We owe them a world of gratitude.

Movie Of the day: Hidden Figures (2016)

Soundtrack: Hidden Figures (2016)

© 2002 – 2021, John Obeto II for Blackground Media Unlimited

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Celebrating Black History Month 2021 #1: Aliko Dangote

Aliko Dangote

The richest Black person on Earth is Aliko Dangote.

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A self-made man, Alhaji Dangote believes in Africa, as is evidenced by his investments in commodities, especially cement production.

Dangote also believes in Nigeria, where his investments in infrastructure, petroleum, finance, telecommunications, trucking, etc., are well on their way to making a positive difference in improving the everyday lives of all Nigerians.

Blaxploitation Movie of the day: Uptown Saturday Night  (1974) starting Sir Sidney Poitier, Calvin Lockhart, Harry Belafonte, Flip Wilson; and Richard Pryor.

Soundtrack: Uptown Saturday Night theme.

© 2002 – 2021, John Obeto II for Blackground Media Unlimited

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Parsing an article on Microsoft's 2020

A tweet earlier today, and a read of the interesting linked article got me thinking of my takes on the selection there.

Let’s go

Surface Pro 7: WIN <- Agreed ✔️

Surface Neo, Windows 10X & dual screens: FAIL <- Agree ✔️

Surface Neo would have been great.....if Windows 10X turned out to be a "touch-first” complete reinterpretation of the Windows UI. Anything else is almost destined to fail.

Miserably, too.

The Windows 10X team could, and should take lessons from how Apple is melding the MacOS UI for touch. Folks, it IS coming: a touchscreen Mac. You can count on it. At that time, it – the touchscreen Mac – would be the best thing since sliced bread-and-marmalade!

Dual screens. Along with foldable screens, they seem to be a money pit of sorts.

Windows on Arm: WTF <-Agreed ✔️

Lesser-powered, lower performance pieces of merde failed woefully in the marketplace.

Why is there any surprise?

Contrast that with Apple, and the strategic differences couldn’t be more distinct: Apple opted for purpose-built device optimized to eek the very best from their OS and associated hardware.

Microsoft, OTOH, went with has served them well so far: off-the-shelf CPUs.

Using the benefit of hindsight, we know how that went.

Making matters worse, the Windows ARM devices were priced to stay on the shelves. That, they did. Very well. Look, even I couldn’t pull the trigger on obtaining any of them for an internal test. They just had no value relative to cost, and comparable devices.

Surface Laptop Go: WIN <- I couldn’t disagree more.

The surface Laptop Go is woefully overpriced, performance be damned.

Price ‘normalization’ is required ASAP.

Microsoft Surface Duo: FAIL <- Agreed ✔️

I am still trying to postmortem the reason why. Was it the hardware? Or the Android operating system, no matter how Microsoft perfumed that pile?

Were the built in Microsoft services not enough to sway or get non-technical press types interested?

Is the world ready for a Microsoft-branded Android device?

Microsoft’s TikTok fiasco: WTF <- Yes, WTF is right ✔️

While Redmondian executives may have data that showed synergistic benefits from such a buy, I can’t help but think of the Microsoft offer to buy Yahoo!

Thankfully, this potential debacle, like the Yahoo! one, failed.

Microsoft’s new Chromium-based Edge: WIN <- Agreed ✔️

The news that Microsoft was abandoning the old Microsoft Edge (Chakra) for Edge Chrome dropped with the force of a high-yield atomic bomb!

I, for one, was stunned, almost beyond belief.

However, this has been an incredible success.

The development process was as open as could be, and enabled me to issue a directive earlier this year once it that gold, recommending that it replace Edge Chakra on client systems as soon as my staff were confident that it wouldn’t break their systems, or that there weren’t incompatible vestigial components in their proprietary software.

It just, worked.

Microsoft closes all physical stores: FAIL <- I couldn’t disagree more!

There simply wasn’t any quantifiable ROI in keeping the stores open. Apple sells a breadth of products that their ‘Geniuses’ try to explain to consumers.

Apart from the very niche Surface products, the Microsoft store didn’t have enough to justify their existence. Not enough traffic either.

From a marketing standpoint, they were sad also-rans, which their physical nature made very evident. The Internet is rife with enough images and ‘studies’ of Microsoft Store foot traffic versus Apple Store’s.

Heck, even on packed shopping event days, the Microsoft Store was empty. The pandemic was a good time as any to pull the plug, and I am pleased that Microsoft did just that.

In other words, it makes sense that they’re kaput. 

Microsoft Teams usage soars: WIN <- Agreed ✔️

This opportunity was Microsoft’s to lose, and they didn’t do so. They initially fell asleep at the wheel, what with owning Teams, Skype, AND Yammer. They then almost compounded it, by requiring a Microsoft Account to use Teams, and a paying account to make video calls.

Thankfully, cooler heads prevailed, and Microsoft has, and is making the moves necessary to ensure Teams is successful. Slack, Zoom, and ahem, Webex, their competition is nimble too.

Cortana keeps being de-emphasized: FAIL <- Agreed ✔️

The raison d'être for Cortana has never been clearly particularized. Resultantly, it does deserve to fail.

Xbox Series X: WIN <- Agreed ✔️

On several levels. A great device+services combo got better.

Apart from purchase hiccups, the rollout has been quite good, initial and follow-up reviews have loved it, and the forthcoming games roadmap is strong.

Mix in the ability to play previous generation games, and an ever-expanding streaming app lineup, and you’ve got a winner.

Anecdotally, my #2 Son and I are quite chuffed with the device!

Microsoft kills Mixer: FAIL <- Agreed ✔️

I never used it – not even once! – neither did I understand the allure of it.

However, I cannot help but think that this may end up being a replay of the Windows Live Spaces shutdown.

Xbox Game Pass for PC/Xbox: WIN <- Agreed. Completely, too ✔️

This is such a genius product.

Granted, you won’t get all the latest tentpole products. However, you get such a large selection of games that your gaming increases exponentially.

We have multiple accounts, and it’s worth it.

Love it.

Microsoft’s online conferences: WIN <- Agreed ✔️

In the age of this deadly plague that is the coronavirus COVID-19, in-person conferences are rightfully verboten, and while logical, it was quite prescient of Microsoft to convert all their in-person confabs to virtual.

While I do not have their P&L numbers from the events, I daresay that the savings from physical location rentals, travel, and other expenses must offset the loss of revenue from paying attendees. For the free-to-attend conferences, it is pure gravy.

Moreover, attendance and viewership are up.

Finally, attendance, viewership, and attention are granularly trackable. That’s invaluable for feedback!

Truly, a win.

Microsoft’s “slice of life” Twitter account: WIN <- Agreed ✔️

In my little interactions with Microsoft on Twitter, I am pleased with how speedily my concerns, rants, and raves are responded to.

For a company the size and heft of Microsoft, that’s quite impressive indeed.

Original article: https://www.pcworld.com/article/3601532/microsofts-wins-fails-and-wtf-moments-of-2020.html

© 2002 – 2021, John Obeto II for Blackground Media Unlimited

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